Manchester Museum to reopen in February 7 Nov 2022

Manchester Museum will be reopening in February 2023, after a £15m redevelopment to transform it into a ‘more inclusive, imaginative and caring’ place. It will redisplay a collection that ranges from a million preserved animals to Egyptian mummies and an internationally important vivarium where variable harlequin toads have been breeding during lockdown in their only location outside Panama. The museum will be hosting a third floor HQ for environmental action in UK museums, connected to the Roots and Branches project. It has also developed a new South Asian gallery, co-curated with 31 people from diaspora communities in the city. Director Esme Ward says “It is co-curation on an epic scale … it is their lived experience and the collections coming together and we hope it will be like alchemy. You will essentially have a sense of diaspora and experience and contribution that you won’t find in any other museum.” Museums Journal, Guardian